For a large portion of Americans, the words "ski chalet" invariably bring up images of Park City or Aspen -- something luxurious, exclusive, and very much unaffordable for the average looker.
While purchasing a vacation property is a luxury by definition, plenty of ski towns across the country are no less picturesque but do not have median real estate values than run upwards of $1 million.
"You want to look for a town that's got a great, built-in community, where most people are skiers or snowboarders to some degree," longtime Colorado resident and author Eugene Buchanan told Realtor.com for its annual ski town round-up. "But it's more about the friendly neighbors who want to know each other, the kind of place where the library has free film festivals and people actually come out to be around each other."
This is Where You Look For That Ski Property
For the ranking, Realtor.com looked at dozens of towns and cities within a 45-minute drive to a ski slope across the country. When evaluating both affordability and atmosphere, Vermont's Rutland came out as a clear winner with a median listing price of $255,000 ($135 per square foot).
The 16,000-person town "combines affordability with plenty of downtown charm and access to slopes, including one of the biggest ski resorts on the East Coast" -- Killington is a 25-minute drive away while the smaller Pico Mountain is even closer.
Two other Northeastern cities scored high on the list. New York's Ellicottville is an hour south of Buffalo by HoliMont Ski Club and has a median listing price of $274,900.
Maine's Kingfield, meanwhile, has a slightly more expensive listing price of $322,000 due to its proximity to Sugarloaf Mountain.
While the ski resort is a luxury destination attracting many top skiers, the nearby communities are quite affordable compared to something within a similar range in Colorado -- Kingfield is just 30 miles from the Canadian border and offers the majestic mountain views that many pine for.
Go Real Estate Shopping Outside Colorado
The Midwestern ski town Hurley in Wisconsin is within driving range of three ski resorts -- Big Powderhorn, Black River Basin at Snowriver Mountain, and Whitecap Mountains Resort -- but has a median listing price of only $115,000 ($82 per square foot).
In the Rockies, it may be best to avoid Colorado as no town in the state made the list due to growing unaffordability. Montana's Anaconda and Idaho's Kellogg are all within driving range of popular winter resorts but have median listing prices right at $300,000.
Given the real estate boom all along the coast over the last decade, Western ski towns also have higher price tags. Even so, California's Mount Shasta sits practically at the foot of a popular ski resort and has a median listing price of $405,000 ($278 per square foot). But be warned that both the town and the resort also happen to sit on a stratovolcano that many geologists believe to still be active.
"The median home price in Mount Shasta is well below the rest of California," reads Realtor.com. "For the same kind of proximity to a ski resort near Lake Tahoe or Mammoth Mountain, the median home price is two to four times as much."
